News, Commentary and Insights from the Flash Player and AIR Product and Engineering Teams

Posts in Category "Linux"

As discussed in the just released Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes, Adobe has been working closely with Google to develop a single modern API for hosting plugins within the browser (one which could replace the current Netscape plugin API being used by the Flash Player). The PPAPI, code-named “Pepper” aims to provide a layer between the plugin and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations.

Because of this work, Adobe has been able to partner with Google in providing a “Pepper” implementation of Flash Player for all x86/64 platforms supported by the Google Chrome browser. Google will begin distributing this new Pepper-based Flash Player as part of Chrome on all platforms, including Linux, later this year.

For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release.

Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-“Pepper” plugin APIs on platforms other than Linux.

We will be providing a debug player implementation of the Flash Player browser plugin on Linux, and will update the whitepaper once we have more details on how it will be distributed.

As the market for applications is increasingly led by mobile devices, Adobe is investing more in simplifying app development and deployment for mobile operating systems. By the end of 2011, we expect that there will be more than 200M smartphones and tablets which can download and run Adobe AIR apps, including devices running Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS.

The recent release of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, including Flash Builder 4.5, enables developers to deliver their experiences on the web and as apps across all the major mobile platforms, as well as popular television, Blu-ray player and set top box platforms. We’re committed to working with our partners to bring Adobe’s runtime technologies to the platforms and devices that are important to end users and developers, including new hardware and operating systems as they come to market.

To support the variety of Linux-based platforms across PCs and devices, we are prioritizing a Linux porting kit for AIR (including source code), which Open Screen Project (OSP) partners can use to complete implementations of AIR for Linux-based platforms on PCs, mobile devices, TVs and TV-connected devices. We will no longer be releasing our own versions of Adobe AIR and the AIR SDK for desktop Linux, but expect that one or more of our partners will do so. The last Adobe release of AIR for desktop Linux is AIR 2.6. By focusing on the porting kit and support of partner implementations, we expect to provide broader support for AIR across Linux-based PCs and devices, whereas our own desktop Linux releases have accounted for less than 0.5% of lifetime AIR downloads.

Existing AIR applications will continue to work on Linux PCs provided they target AIR 2.6 or below, and users may continue to use their existing AIR applications without interruption. However, users will not be able to install applications or apply application updates (including security updates) that require a later version of AIR, unless and until such later versions are released by an OSP partner.

We will of course share more information about any partner plans to support AIR for desktop Linux. In the meantime, for more information please review the FAQ.

Adobe is pleased to announce the availability of the Adobe® AIR® 2.6 SDK and AIR® 2.6 desktop runtimes for Windows, Mac and Linux. With AIR 2.6, AIR achieves feature parity for Android and iOS platforms. This new release provides major performance and feature enhancements for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) app development as well as updates for Android and desktop app development.

“Adobe AIR 2.6 enables me to develop once and publish across multiple platforms. There are slight tweaks required for each platform (Android vs iOS) but we’re talking about a few minutes not weeks. The majority of the optimizations revolve around screen sizes which would be an issue regardless of the development tool. If I were targeting Android and iOS natively vs Adobe AIR I would expect my costs to be at least 80% higher; and much closer to 100 – 150% higher should maintenance and updates be required for each platform.”

-Charlie Schulze, President and co-founder, Woven Interactive, LLC

Video: Watch Charlie Schulze’s demo of “Comb Over Charlie” a multiscreen app (Android and iOS smartphones, tablets and Windows laptop) developed using AIR.

New Features in AIR 2.6 for iOS and Android

AIR for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

“I’m now getting 60 fps on an iPhone 3GS, it’s smoother than Packager for iPhone too!”

-Kevin Newman, Senior Developer, adcSTUDIO

“My project uses things like vector graphics, blend modes, and filters. In the past, many effects needed to be removed or altered for iOS to achieve decent performance. This gargantuan improvement means that I can now use the same project to target both iOS and Android. It’s likely to save me many hours of time previously spent on optimization.”

-Josh Tynjala, Founder, Bowler Hat Games

Updated AIR for iOS support with improved performance. Developers can take advantage of new features in iOS 4 like multitasking, Retina display support for higher screen resolutions, and front and back camera support. Developers can now build applications that capture audio with microphone support and take advantage of the same graphics hardware method used in AIR for Android using OpenGL ES 2 for high performance graphics.

Packager for iPhone (PFI) is now replaced with functionality integrated with AIR Developer Tool (ADT) a command-line tool for compiling applications in the AIR SDK. ADT can now be used to package AIR files, native desktop installers, AIR applications for Android and iOS.

Submit apps to be included in the Amazon Appstore for Android when the store launches. Companies now have an additional distribution option with one of the largest online shopping destinations on the web. Learn more in Christian Cantrell’s blog post “AIR 2.6 Applications and the Amazon Appstore for Android”.

USB debugging was added as an additional debugging option to WiFi. Learn more about AIR 2.6 features for mobile and desktop please read Scott Castle’s article“What’s new in AIR 2.6″.

"Now, the new download manager allows users to view their favourite BBC shows, online or offline, with a high quality solution across operating systems."

Important note: Similar to the web version, The BBC desktop iPlayer is only available to UK audiences and can only be accessed within the United Kingdom. According to this BBC iPlayer help page, they are looking into adding additional region support in the future through BBC Worldwide. Andrew has a few more images on his blog post in case you are curious what it looks like.

We have received a few reports from Linux users having trouble running applications with AIR 1.5. Most of these cases appear related to the fact that the user had previously installed AIR applications using Adobe AIR for Linux beta we made available on Labs (an early release).

In the release notes (.pdf), we mention that you need to reinstall versions of your AIR applications that were installed using the Adobe AIR 1.1 Linux beta. However, we thought we’d try and provide step by step instructions on how to do this and answer a few other questions that we have heard from Linux users.

Do I need to reinstall all of my AIR applications installed using the AIR 1.1 beta runtime before they will work on Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux?
Yes. AIR Applications installed using the beta version of Adobe AIR 1.1 for Linux must be reinstalled before they will run on Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux.

Do I need to remove data saved by previous installations of my AIR applications, for them to work with AIR 1.5?
Yes, this data needs to be cleaned up when transitioning to Adobe AIR 1.5. You can do this by removing the folders ".appdata", ".adobe/AIR" and ".macromedia/Flash_Player/www.macromedia.com/bin/air*" from your home directory ($HOME). Do note that this will remove passwords and other saved data stored by AIR applications and will need to be entered again.

How do I uninstall my Adobe AIR applications on Linux?
Adobe AIR applications are installed as a native package (.rpm or .deb) on Linux. To uninstall an AIR application on Linux, use your system’s package manager to search for and remove the application that you want to uninstall.

Search for the application that you want to uninstall under the "Search" tab such as "Twhirl" or "TweetDeck"

Remove the checkmark for the application’s package in the search results

Click the "Apply" button to remove the application

How do I uninstall the Adobe AIR runtime betas on Linux?

Adobe AIR is installed as an .rpm or .deb depending on your particular system. To uninstall the runtime that was previously installed, search using your package manager (as described above) for "Adobe" or "adobe" and remove all of the packages AdobeAIR_enu", "adobeair_enu", "adobeair1.0-enu" or "adobeair-enu" from your system. Also remove the "adobe-certs" package from your system.

If you prefer using a terminal command line, you could do the following:

The easiest way to uninstall AIR from your system is through the "Adobe AIR Uninstaller" menuitem under Applications/Accessories.

Alternatively, you could search for and remove the package "adobeair1.0" from the system (using the system’s package manager (e.g. Synaptic on Ubuntu)). If you prefer using a terminal command line, you could do the following:

On Ubuntu 7.10:

sudo dpkg -r adobeair1.0

On openSUSE 10.3:

sudo rpm -e adobeair1.0

On Fedora 8:

sudo rpm -e adobeair1.0

How do I uninstall AIR applications installed with AIR 1.5 on Linux?
Uninstall AIR applications exactly the way you would uninstall other applications on your system. The procedure is the same as outlined at the beginning of this post.

Why am I unable to install an AIR application through an install badge on a web page?
You will need to get the latest version of the Flash Player (10.0.15.3) to install AIR applications through an install badge.

Will AIR run on newer versions of Linux distributions? For example, Adobe AIR’s system requirements say Ubunutu 7.10, but I am running 8.10.
While we have not tested fully against newer versions of these distributions, we believe AIR should run fine in most cases. If you run into an issue, please send us a bug description using our feedback form and we will look into addressing it in a future version. For a list of our supported Linux distributions, please see our System Requirements page.

Will AIR run on Linux distributions not listed in your system requirements? For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
Although we focused testing AIR against Fedora 8, Ubuntu 7.10, and openSUSE 10.3, it’s likely that AIR will run on other Linux distributions as well. For more information on the libraries required by AIR, see the Packages required to run Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux technote. For a list of our supported Linux distributions, please see our System Requirements page.

A month ago, at our MAX conference in San Francisco, Adobe announced the immediate availability of the Adobe AIR 1.5 runtime and SDK for Mac and Windows. However, since the beginning of the AIR project when the AIR runtime was originally known by its code name Apollo, it has been our intention to bring the runtime and SDK to the Linux community as well. Earlier this year we posted a public beta on Adobe Labs and collected feedback from thousands of users on forums, blogs, Twitter posts, and our team’s feedback form.

Today, we are very pleased to announce the availability of AIR 1.5 for Linux. Thousands of AIR applications such as Twhirl (a popular Twitter client), AOL’s Top 100 Videos, and Parleys.com, are now available to millions of Linux users. This announcement also means that web developers can now use the AIR SDK to create a single desktop application that works on Linux, Mac, and Windows without any changes.

Important note: In order to take advantage of the badge install feature of AIR, you will need to update to the latest version of the Flash Player for Linux (10.0.15.3).

Update: We made a follow-up post that answers a few frequently asked questions related to Adobe AIR for Linux including how to resolve an installation issue some users are experiencing. .

As Linux users are well aware, Linux is available in many different distributions. We decided to focus on three open distributions: Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE based on feedback from the community. Please be sure to visit our updated system requirements page for additional information about the versions of distributions we are supporting.

Many of us here at Adobe are Linux fanatics and our commitment to the Linux community is stronger than ever. Adobe is a member of the Linux Foundation and collaborates with other members of the foundation to help improve Linux. In the past couple of months, at a product level, the Flash Player team not only simultaneously shipped Flash Player 10 on Mac, Windows, and Linux, but they also made an alpha version of Flash Player 10 available for 64-bit Linux distributions on Adobe Labs. Since the Flash Player is included inside of the AIR runtime, AIR 1.5 does natively not support 64-bit Linux distributions at this time. If you are interested in seeing AIR for Linux support 64-bit distributions, I’d like to encourage you to participate in the Player 10 64-bit prerelease forums and send a note to our team if you would like to see this support in AIR.

We’ve also posted a new tech notes describing how to run Adobe AIR on a 64-bit Linux operating system:

Our team would like to welcome your feedback on AIR 1.5. If you believe you are encountering a bug, please be sure to review the release notes (.pdf) and the user forums. If there is a specific bug or feature request that you would like to let us know about, please drop us a note by filling out the feedback form on our website. Thank you to the community of Linux developers and users that made this possible!